


silence of the turning earth

by owlinaminor



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Character Study, College, M/M, Post-Canon, angst (ish)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-06
Updated: 2018-01-06
Packaged: 2019-02-28 22:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13281558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owlinaminor/pseuds/owlinaminor
Summary: What happens to a king when his kingdom is lost?  What happens to those who love him?





	silence of the turning earth

**Author's Note:**

> it's been ages since i've been active in haikyuu, but today is ushiten day and i just _had_ to write something for my boys. it's a little sad; i didn't really mean for that to happen, but i'm okay with it.
> 
> title from [engines](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRf5pOrorXU) by snow patrol.
> 
> written quite fast and unbeta'd; all mistakes are my own.

 

> _Ushijima: I wanted to be able to say straight to their faces, “I’m stronger than you.”  It was probably quite immature of me… but even so, I wanted to say it._
> 
> _Tendou: The things that motivate people are usually quite immature, no?  You hit a mean ass straight.  I felt like I saw a new Wakatoshi...  I'm going to quit volleyball in high school.  I'll watch all the big events you're in on television, and I'll be saying, "I was Ushijima's true friend," so don't you dare go slacking on me._
> 
> _\- Haikyuu, chapter 189_

 

Satori remembers the first time he talked to Wakatoshi.

It was their second day of high school, lunch period.  Satori grabbed his lunch from his locker and sprinted across the cafeteria, slid into a seat in the corner of the cafeteria, across from a boy with dark hair, too-closely cropped bangs, and shoulders broader than any other boy his age Satori’d ever seen, putting away a plate of rice as though it was his sole purpose in life.

“You’re Ushijima Wakatoshi,” Satori said.

Wakatoshi looked up from his rice long enough to give Satori a cursory glance.  His eyes were dark, unreadable.  They reminded Satori of the forest out behind his house in the middle of the night.

“I was at volleyball practice with you yesterday,” Satori explained.  “I saw how you spiked harder than everyone, even the third-years.  How’d you get to be so strong?”

Wakatoshi shrugged.  And Satori was drawn again to the broad line of his shoulders, the way they seemed to sit heavily, as though bearing a mountain that nobody else could see.

“You’re going to be captain one day,” Satori said.

Wakatoshi looked up again, for longer this time.  His eyes were dark – less like a forest, Satori thought, and more like an ocean, or perhaps a night sky waiting to be lit with stars.

“I am,” he replied.  And he went back to his rice.

 

 

That was three years ago, to the day.

Satori wonders if Wakatoshi remembers – if he is perhaps remembering right now, if his mind and Satori’s are inhabiting the same space even as Wakatoshi leaps down there on the court and Satori sits up here in the bleachers.  But that would be ridiculous.  Surely Wakatoshi has better things to focus on – the height of his jump, for example, or the angle of his arm, or the voice of his setter – some tiny blonde kid Satori has never heard of – as he calls out cues.

It’s his first game on his new, college team.  Satori is here as a surprise.  Or, it was supposed to be a surprise – one shout from Satori’s open mouth when Wakatoshi hit a spike and Satori was suddenly caught, vulnerable, as transfixed in Wakatoshi’s gaze as though a spotlight had been cast upon him.

Wakatoshi has always been good at that.  Casting spotlights.  Satori has wondered, never asked, if he does it on purpose or if it’s an innate talent, if he was born able to look at angry boys with ridiculous hair and freeze them in their tracks, just like that.

But then, nothing about Wakatoshi is innate talent.  He’s a spear, or a crossbow, or a battering ram, built from hours of lifting weights and running laps and spiking, always spiking, working his arms until they’re hard as tree trunks and twice as ringed in history.  He’s been practicing casting spotlights since their second year of high school, when the captain got injured during a tournament and Wakatoshi had to step in, had to stand on the sidelines and let each member of the team know precisely what he expected of them.

Or perhaps he’s been casting spotlights since the day he pushed Satori up against the wall in their locker room, dark eyes still and steady until Satori was spilling out, spilling his heart and lungs and anything else he could think to give.

Loving him, like everything else, took practice.  Satori runs through it in his mind now – it makes it easier to watch Wakatoshi on the court, fifty meters or fifty continents below, fighting there without him.  There were boundaries that needed to be set.  They could kiss in one of their bedrooms, or in the locker room, but only if it was certain nobody else was around.  They could spend one afternoon together after practice each week, one weekend day every month.  Satori could call Wakatoshi by his first name, but only in private.  (This was the one rule Satori pushed against – until he could call it out in the middle of games, fill stadiums with it, fill nations.)

Loving him was unlike loving anyone else.  Not that Satori had had much practice before – and not, as he thought, lying on his back in a Tokyo hotel the night before his first Nationals as a starter, Wakatoshi illuminated by moonlight next to him, that he would ever experience it quite like this again.  But it was unlike any version of love he’d seen on screens or read in books or learned about in history classes.  It was a different flavor of the thing, a different color – more secretive (even though their teammates figured it out soon enough) and yet more open.  It was stolen glances in the midst of a crowded gym, and it was counting painful seconds until they could speak five words to each other, and it was racing up a mountain and throwing themselves down on the grass at the summit and rolling and laughing with their arms spread wide as the sky.

Satori never found Oikawa Tooru particularly interesting or a worthwhile opponent, really, never found him good for much more than the expression he wore when Satori saw past his strategies.  But he started to resent the kid when he heard people calling him _Great King._   How could they crown some upstart who wore his emotions on his sleeve and had never gone to Nationals – how could they look right past true royalty?

How could they look past a boy who was more captain than human – past Wakatoshi, who inhabited duality so cleanly, kept the weight atop his shoulders sitting so easily, nobody but Satori ever noticed?

 

 

 _We get two years,_ Wakatoshi was saying, with every look and every flicker and every hand on a shoulder telling Satori to _hush, someone might see._

Two years, until the Wakatoshi who lead his team with soft commands and strong spikes stepped to the forefront.  Until the Wakatoshi who stopped to pet every dog in Miyagi prefecture and laughed with his head thrown backwards and traced the curves of Satori’s ribs as though he was something precious stepped backwards, kept walking and walking until he vanished into a shadow.

Two years, until the captain stepped into a legend, and the boy Satori had followed would disappear.

 

 

Satori remembers the morning after they lost to Karasuno.

 _One hundred practice serves,_ Washijou had said.  He did not count, that night, as each member of the Shiratorizawa starting lineup hit one serve, then the next, then the next, until their palms were burning and their arms aching.  He only watched, only nodded at them one by one as they left the gym, their heads hanging like so many lolling corpses.  He trusted them that much, at least.

Wakatoshi was the last one there, standing on the back line.  Satori waited for him, an hour after the others had left, until his mother was screaming at him on the phone to come home.  It was only when the sun was fully extinguished, the stars high in the sky, that he finally packed up his gear and headed for the bus.

And when he returned to the gym the next morning, Wakatoshi was still there – his rhythm of toss, preparation, hit, follow-through as steady as though he’d only been going for half an hour.

“This isn’t how we’re going to win, you know,” Satori told him.

Wakatoshi didn’t turn to face him, didn’t acknowledge him.  Only picked up another ball.  And he seemed larger than life, suddenly – more statue than boy, more general than soldier.

But Satori pressed on.  “Doing this will only build your strength, and you already have strength.  You have more brute force than anyone else put together.  What you need is flexibility – and you started to show it yesterday, maneuvering around blocks, hitting that cross at the last second – but if you keep going like this, you’re just going to hammer it down.”

Wakatoshi stopped.  But only to walk to the other side of the court, do a few stretches against the wall, collect his balls.

 _I wanted to be able to say straight to their faces, “I’m stronger than you,”_ Wakatoshi had said.  _It was probably quite immature of me,_ Wakatoshi had said.  And Satori wanted to scream at him, _it’s okay to say that, it’s okay to want things for yourself more than for your team, it’s okay to_ feel –

But the boy he loved was all caught up in the captain he would follow to the ends of the earth, out there on that volleyball court, his shoulders heavier than Satori had ever seen them before.

And so Satori had grabbed a ball, and gone to the back line, and started to echo –

He is so caught up in the remembering he barely notices what’s actually happening on the court beneath him.  He barely notices until it’s too late to shout in protest, to tell Wakatoshi’s captain that he’s _insane,_ pulling out a spiker who could only be his best first-year just because he’s too set in one strategy, just because he can’t adapt fast enough, just because he’s not yet used to his new setter –

Wakatoshi sits down on the bench and glances up at the stands, so brief that Satori only catches a glimmer of dark, dark brown before he focuses back on the court.  He does not move for the remaining two sets.  He is planted deep as an oak tree on the side of a highway, steady even as the world races too fast past him.

 

 

“Is it strange, to no longer be a captain?” Satori asks.

He and Wakatoshi are lying on their backs in Wakatoshi’s tiny dorm room, staring up at the ceiling, painted a deep navy blue.  Wakatoshi’s roommate has gone home for the weekend – took one look at Wakatoshi and Satori in the doorway, hand in hand, Wakatoshi’s hair still wet from the showers and Satori’s eyes blazing, and started packing his bag – but the room still feels oppressive.  Full.  As though the walls might close in any moment.

Wakatoshi turns to his side, looks at Satori.  His eyes are unreadable in the twilight, only one lamp switched on at Wakatoshi’s bedside.  And Satori aches to tell him _it’s okay to want, it’s okay to feel,_ but he settles for resting his palm against Wakatoshi’s cheek, savoring the warmth as Wakatoshi closes his eyes against it.

“It is,” Wakatoshi confesses.  “It’s… confusing.”

“But you looked good out there today, not being a captain,” Satori tells him, shifting his weight to move ever so slightly closer.  “You looked lighter.  As though a weight had been lifted.”

“Coach says I need to rely less on my strength,” Wakatoshi says.  “He says there will always be someone stronger.”

“And what do you think?” Satori replies.

“Strength… is who I am,” Wakatoshi says, slow and true as the ocean.

“Yeah.”  Satori lets his hand drop to Wakatoshi’s waist, then trail along his arm until he finds Wakatoshi’s hand, rough and calloused and lined with scars.

“I will be captain again,” Wakatoshi says.

And Satori wants to say, _but what if you aren’t, and even if you are, that’ll only be for another year, and then maybe you’ll join a pro team and become captain of that but even that’ll only be for another year or two, and then what, then you’ll be washed up at twenty-five and you’ll have forgotten who you are outside of one hundred serves and one hundred spikes and casting spotlights and carrying mountains, you'll have forgotten how it feels to run and jump and want things for yourself –_

 _you’ll have forgotten_ me –

Satori wants a lot of things.  Most of them vanished on the wind, a sunny afternoon in March when Wakatoshi climbed on a train and didn’t look back.

And so he meets Wakatoshi’s gaze, and he holds on, and he says, “You’ll always be a captain to me.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i think this is going to be the first in a series of literary explorations i'm planning around the theme of [the king's two bodies](https://books.google.com/books/about/The_King_s_Two_Bodies.html?id=RKYPxN0SLdYC), a theory that arose during the english renaissance around the idea that a king has two bodies, the body natural (his individual, human body) and the body politic (his embodiment of all the people and ideals of his nation). the influence of that theory on this fic is... probably pretty clear. the other fics i'm planning for this little series most likely won't be about haikyuu characters, but who can really say for sure.
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/owlinaminor) / [tumblr](http://owlinaminor.tumblr.com/)


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